And then the trouble started.
A rocket, bringing in food, and money to pay our crews, blew up in space, just as it was coming close. The light of the blast was blinding and awesome, making even the bright stars seem to vanish for a moment. Atomic rocket fuel going up. Gobs of molten metal dripped groundward, like real meteors heated in an atmosphere which still didn't exist.
It could have been an accident. You can't always control titanic atomic power, and space ships fly to pieces quite frequently. But then I had a suspicion that maybe this wasn't an accident.
Nick and I were in the open plain to see it happen. He'd just come from the airtight barracks we'd built. His face didn't change much behind the quartz crystal of his oxygen helmet—it only sobered a trifle. While the fiery wreckage of the rocket was still falling in shreds and fragments, he spoke, his voice clicking in my receptor phones:
"Yeah, Chet.... And there's trouble on asteroid 439, too, where our mines are located. I just got the radio message, back at the office. Sabotage, and some men killed. It seems that some of the workmen are trying to break things up for us. Harley's in charge. I think he can handle matters—for a while."
"I hope so," I answered fervently. "If the work only turns out right at this end. With that ship smashed, we'll be on short rations for a week. And we've lost some important machinery. The pay money's insured, but the men won't like the delay."
I didn't expect much trouble from the crew—yet. It was Irene that really helped the most—mastered the situation. She'd taken over the management of the kitchens since the start of the work.
But now she had an additional job. She talked to that rough crew of ours. "We're going to win, boys!" she told them. "We know what we've got to do: Our task is for the good of every one of us—and for many people yet to come!"
Simple, straightforward, inspiring talk. Funny what men will do for a pretty girl—against hell itself. But that wasn't all of it. The paintings of hers, that she'd hung in our recreation room, showed what asteroid 487 could be, when we were finished with it.
Space men are the toughest kind of adventurers that ever lived. But adventurers are always optimists, sentimentalists, romanticists, no matter how hard the exterior. And space men, by the very nature of the appalling region to which they belong, believe in miracles.